This is the question I’m getting asked most often at the
moment. The obvious answer is, well, obvious. Yes, Defiant Peaks is the final book in The Hadrumal Crisis trilogy so it brings this particular story to a conclusion.

Yes but, people persist in asking, is it, y’know theend? Trying to fathom what they mean, I realise that at least
some folk have been a bit unnerved by my remarks over the past couple of years
about this final book’s cover art. I’ve explained on panels and at conventions
how writing this series has set me thinking more deeply than ever before about
the way that Einarinn’s elemental wizards actually have an understanding of
matter at the sub-molecular level. Which is great for them but a bit tricky for
me since I went down the Languages and Humanities path at school rather than
doing Science. Thank goodness for those marvellous history of science
programmes which the awesome Professor Jim Al-Khalili has been doing for BBC
Four.

I have been wondering precisely what Archmage Planir is
doing in that final picture ever since I first got Clint Langley’s awesome
artwork. Well into the writing of this series, I have honestly had no clue. Is
it, I have wondered aloud more than once, something akin to The Manhattan
Project? The Hadrumal Project? Will Planir end up quoting Robert Oppenheimer;
“Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Okay, now I realise where some of that nervousness is coming
from, especially from people who’ve already read Dangerous Waters and Darkening
Skies. Anyone expecting that this trilogy’s middle volume would be mostly
focused on getting characters in place for the big battle to come must have got
a bit of a shock reading that. As Defiant Peak’s back cover notes, “Archmage
Planir and the wizards of Hadrumal have unleashed their devastating
magic...”

So I can see that readers could be a bit nervous about the
possible consequences for the end of the series if Archmage Planir decides it’s
never too late to escalate. Especially since those readers who are familiar
with my previous books now have very well-founded suspicions about just who and
what Hadrumal’s wizards will be facing. “The Archipelagans are baying for
wizard blood, enraged at magic invading their domains...” Yes, and it’s not
just the Aldabreshi Planir has to worry about as this series sees everyone – me
included – learn a lot more about Hadrumal’s internal rivalries, wizardry in
Solura and the different groups perfecting Artifice’s enchantments elsewhere.

Not that everyone asking this question is quite so
apprehensive though. A few people have simply asked me because they realise
this is my fifteenth novel set in the same world and with a continuous timeline
threaded through the different stories told in each of my four epic fantasy
series. Haven’t I said everything I’ve got to say with these characters and
through this milieu? I have been writing shorter fiction in an increasingly
wide range of other worlds and styles lately so isn’t it simply time for a
change of scene?

You won’t be surprised to learn that most of those asking
this aren’t primarily genre fans. One central aspect of epic fantasy fiction
which I have always adored as a reader is the way that these stories generate
questions and asides which the main narrative can’t spare the time to focus on.
I’ve never felt that those ‘but what if’ and ‘how come’ and ‘but who’ loose
threads detract from fantasy tales. They add depth and interest, a sense of a
complete world continuing on when that final page is turned, and besides, real
life is just as full of tangents and unknowns. Like so many other writers I’ve
often found that pondering answers to those questions leads me to a whole new
story. This has been a staple of epic fantasy writing ever since reading The
Hobbit prompted us to wonder just where Gollum’s magic ring had come from and
what it might signify.

So, is this the end? Oh, come on, do you honestly expect me
to answer that? Read the book and find out for yourself!